Bad mgoblog Twitter post is bad

If somebody could please embed for me, but here is the link.
https://mobile.twitter.com/mgoblog/status/897134505030545408
I think some of us need to separate the real world and sports world sometimes. I understand the premise as far as the ridiculous moral victory headlines, but to put MSU and what happened on Saturday next to each other is pretty shitty.

Using an extremely sad situation to make a lighthearted comparison can be funny sometimes. In this case it's not. Agree its a dumb tweet. If there's a joke in there somewhere, I don't get it (or else I don't want to get it). It's not an overreaction - it's just my calmly considered view.

And deligitimizing a critique by saying it's a product of an overreaction is a weak ad hominem fallacy. Won't work.

If someone had tried making the same joke as a board post it would get negged to oblivion.

If an MSU or OSU personality did a similar comparison against us on twitter, this would be a thread about how deplorable those fan bases are.

It was not funny and at the very least, in poor taste. It doesn't matter if some people are OK with it, as clearly there are many who aren't, and dismissing others anger as faux outrage and hyper sensitivity is lazy. The mature thing to do it simply retract and apologize.

Sweet fuck, man. The fact that you, as an adult, can be so factually wrong and willing to believe this nonsense is disturbing. You've really outdone yourself on this thread. There's no way you can be successful.

You'd be surprised, how many fuck wits are actually reasonably successful... in financial terms. Life in general? That's another topic. People are fucking STUPID, man. Just drop in to Reddit for a while, and take in the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging hordes. It's incredible.

Dont ask me what equivocating is. All i know is this is the same guy. If you could tell this is the same guy, then you know the difference. If you cant tell look at it closer and convince yourself that it is.

I gotta say, I get the impetus to want to put a little humor into things, and Brian has tried to explain the joke, but... I don't get it. It's a bad look. And a really non-timely take, given Heather Heyer. Football is not comparable to a domestic terrorist attack that killed someone protesting Nazis.

I think there is wisdom here, but the times may well have changed that. I had this conversation with two of my kids this w/e, and told them that optimally we would all just ignore them, but that takes an entire community to agree to do that. That's unrealistic these days.

If 500 Nazis/KKKers/Odinists (whatever TF that is) come to your town to stir up trouble, I think its naive to pretend there won't be some sort of counterprotest. And if there's gonna be a counterprotest, it might as well be a disciplined and forceful one. But not a violent one.

I understand the impulse to counter (though the number of people willing to actually associate themselves with that tripe is pretty low, with these well-publicized "nationwide rallies" getting a few hundred people--a lot of these things are just a gathering of a couple dozen people if nobody else bothers to show). Thing is, even when it's peaceful it gets more attention than the rally deserves, and it rarely stays peaceful.

Ann Arbor has some experience with this--some people here will remember the KKK rally in the 90s (94, I think). A counterprotest was led by a fringe-y type group and things turned violent. It took Keshia Thomas to expose the absurdity of it all; she was and is a hero.

That's why I note here and elsewhere that the protest needs to be disciplined. Disciplined, peaceful, and forceful counterprotests are possible, happen with reasonable frequency, and are beautiful things.

Right, but as SJRking suggests, it's important to recognize that generating a conflict that can be portrayed as 'bad, violent people on both sides' is integral to the strategies of both the alt-right types themselves AND the (far) right media, which is willing to use even a KKK rally that got someone killed as an opportunity to provoke distrust and loathing of the left.

hitler started WWII and killed 50 million - Nazi = National Socialist Party for Germany.

stalin killed 50 million of his own folks.

mao killed at least 50 million of his own folks.

abortion, a left wing favorite, killing black children in a grossly out of proportion percentage and responsible for the deaths of conservatively 50 million american children.

khmer rouge, roughly 6 million

and the KKK is a creation of the democrat party down south, to terrorize blacks and the repubs that fought for their freedom. those idiots this weekend were lead by an 'occupy wall street' loser. there is no part of their political ideology that goes with any genuine principal of right wing thought.

Sorry, this is political, and I know that is verbotten. But abortion, regardless of your views towards it, is not killing black children. Nor is it killing white children (or any other ethnicity). The mothers and fathers (absent, or not) are killing those kids. Abortion is the tool in the same manner as guns are a tool. Tools don't decide, people do.

Yes, the founding members of the KKK were members of the Democratic party, because southern Democrats were reactionary (hard right). The Republican party was founded as a single-issue abolitionist party when the Whigs fell apart in the 1850s -- in other words, it was socially liberal at the time.

The parties gradually changed sides in terms of their positions. However, for years after the Civil War, few white politicians would run in the south as Republicans, because Republicans were blamed for abolition, Reconstruction, and the general ills of southern society. The label was more important than the positions were.

By the end of WWII, both parties had aligned themselves mostly around economics and the military; there were liberal New England Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat / Dixiecrat.

During the 50s and 60s, as the national Democratic party came out in favor of social change, and became more socially liberal, many southern Democrats defected. LBJ's decision to sign the Civil Rights Act pushed many of those same people into the Republican camp for the same reason that their great-great-great-grandparents had become Democrats in the first place.

None of that means that the Republican party is racist, or that white supremecists are welcomed by the party. But it's disingenous to claim that today's neo-Nazis are anything but the reactionary right wing.

democrats. see al gore's dad. JFK's dad, joe (a racist, not necessarily KKK). william fulbright. bull connor the mayor of new york, hosing blacks down viciously....democrat. segregation is and was a democrat idea, see william mcgovern and george wallace for dem presidential candidates that supported. Ike, a repub, was the one who took that away with the national guard.

woodrow wilson, democrat president, fired all the black federal workers and said he was doing them a service. LBJ was a horrible racist...and a democrat.

dems filibustered or voted down all civil rights legislation until at least 1964 and only then changed when they realized they'd never win a national election again if they didn't. welfare has utterly destroyed minority families - what is it now, 85% of black children born into unwed homes? and single parenting is the most defining correlative trait in determining poverty, crimimnal behavior, drug addiction, suicide, being victims of crime and of course, divorce.

of that changes one fundamental truth - Donald Trump is a repugnant fascist national disgrace that is destroying the fabric of this country. The time has come to stop hedging and deflecting. His comments today were not only abominable and frankly scary as hell, but completely factually false. You can give however long of a history lesson you want to deflect, but certain people in this country allowed their own hate and failures to put a sick man in the White House. Now we all have to find a way to get him the hell out while preserving some iteration of the core values of this country and not devolving into a large scale domestic conflict. The time for fancy (False) talk is over and the truth is plain as day and right in front of your face. He is sick and we are all in trouble if the rest of the machinery of this government won't do their job and restore order. Yes, this is political, but this shit is getting real now and I am tired of people deflecting, fabricating, and relying on false equivalencies to hide it and justify. This man needs to go.

but if you mean violent, viscous mobs, well that is owned by a margin of about 1000 to 1 by the left. how many half-masked thugs, riots, vandals, car burnings, cop shootings, and beatings have you seen that were by the right? answer is probably none. so go ahead, redefine the word and make yourself feel better, it isn't changing what's really going on. and if choosing america first and trying to make our country more fiscally sound is all of that, well, okay, but that again is very emotional and subjective nonsense, not reality.

and i didn't see any POTUS comments other than condemning the violence and properly calling out the left for their violence which dwarfs the right. is it so painful to hear the truth? you are very smart john, i know that. please do the homework in a dispasstionate manner. you might be surprised. and again, if this one incident is so upsetting, then why the total silence to my posting the facts of 100 yrs of leftist genocide in the hundreds of millions, and violence? how can you skip past that and suddenly seize on a few dozen wingnuts?

you saw was the POTUS essentially blame a female protester of a hateful sick mob for getting run over by a car driven by an extremist right lunatic spurred on by the constant hateful speech of his dear leader, and the former grand wizard of the KKK thank him for it. You can spin a lot but you can't spin that. I respect you but you are contorting yourself in all different directions only to put yourself on the wrong side of history. I truly hope that you recognize that folly sooner rather than later.

somebody hasn't been watching nearly enough. It's not CNN, it's not MSNBC, it's not fake news, it's not Hillary, it's not BLM, it isn't anything else you want to blame to deflect. It is him. He is dangerous and he needs to go. And just curious, did you see David Duke's personal adaboy to our president. That is not CNN. That actually happened. That is sick. Did you see all of those "make America great again" hats on those juvenile man-children waving tiky torches and chanting epithets from 1920s clan rallies and Nazi germany. Again, not CNN.

In your original post, you talked about "leftists". Now you're talking about Democrats. Historically, Democrats were not ideologically "leftists" - that only started to become a consistent characteristic in the 1900's, and evolved throughout the 20th century.

Similarly, the partisan support of racists has also evolved.

Yep, there were a ton of racist Democrats, especially in the south. "Dixiecrats" did a lot of bad stuff and had some horrible ideas. However, progressive Democrats also accomplished a lot of important things. Many Democrats were not racist, and worked hard for civil rights.

FDR enacted a ton of progressive legislation that aimed to improve the lives of Americans in need and provide a safety net. Eleanor Roosevelt influenced FDR and his policy greatly, and she was a powerful civil rights champion.

Ike wasn't a big supporter of Brown vs. Board of Education, and dragged his feet for quite awhile before reluctantly sending in the guard.

Eisenhower, (Justice) Warren would later recall, told him that white southerners “are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”

While Ike did some positive things regarding civil rights, he was not exatly a champion of equality.

Truman, Kennedy and Johnson all openly supported Civil Rights legislation. It seems you've forgotten that Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. He was no angel and his motives may not have always been pure, but he put everything on the line to push things through.

"In signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, President Johnson said he feared his party had lost the South for a generation."

The plain fact is that most Civil Rights legislation was passed by Democratic administrations.

For sure many, if not most Republicans in congress voted for civil rights legislation, but don't forget that Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee, was vehemently opposed.

During that same era, some "Dixiecrats" changed party affiliation, and conservative Republicans replaced retiring "Dixiecrats".

That trend continued as the last of the remaining Dixiecrats died off or switched parties (Byrd, Helms, Thurmond, etc.). Most overt white racists these days (if party affiliated) are Republican. That absolutely does NOT mean that most Republicans support those viewpoints, just as most Democrats didn't support racist views in 1960.

George Wallace, BTW, was never a Democratic nominee; the only time he was on a presidential ballot was 1968, when he ran as an independent.

he was a huge proponent of minority rights. what he objected to was the federal govt involvement in private affairs, specifically housing. he hated the racism and stood up against it, but he also saw the abuse that was coming if/when the feds got involved in private contracts like that.

and 'racism' to me includes the crippling effects of the welfare state and the destruction of the family unit - and that is an objectively leftist thing. you subjectively say that repubs are more racist (and certainly there are some), but i see/hear the 'N' word from dems, and particularly other blacks. it is racism.

Anyone who actually pays attention knows that the politics of the Democratic and Republican parties are RADICALLY different today than they were in the past. It's like today's Republicans trying to claim Lincoln when anyone with half a brain can see by the voting patterns of today's states/demographics/issues that Lincoln would clearly be a Democrat in today's world.

Get a grip. Your arguments are utter garbage, and pretty much put you in "never worth listening to again on pretty much any topic."

you don't have a substantive answer. and the violence from the left continues to this very day. mob rule, mob violence, hate capitalism and Christianity which is responsible for the rise of this country. you do realize that virtually every other part of the world it is considered bizarre that our founding document starts with: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'. that is completely alien thinking in places like india, asia and the middle east.

Yeah, I don't have a substantive answer on how the political parties have gone through radical position switches on social issues from 60-70 years ago except for like every damn political history book in print.

People like you are ridiculous. Go back to ranting about 6th grade nonsense like the Nazis must have been left-wing because they put 'Socialist" in their name. C'mon Man. The rest of us that actually know something (anything?) about history will be waiting if you ever care to educate yourself.

Your posts here makes it very clear that will never, ever happen, as you quite clearly revel in your either intentional ignorance or intentional misrepresentation of reality.

One might trace the beginning of the defection of southern whites from the Democratic Party to Truman's decision to integrate the armed forces. Truman, for a politician from Missouri, actually did a bit to move the Democratic Party forward on civil rights. (Good topic for debate: was Truman actually better for civil rights than Roosevelt?)

Anyway, thanks for the nice summary. I do get a little tired of people using "Strom Thurmond was a Democrat!!!" to prove that the GOP as it is currently constituted is somehow the party leading the way on racial equality.

There are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start and where to end. I guess the real answer is there's no point, because you're dug into your trench and that's that.

But just for the casual observer, let's just take the top of the list. The "National Socialist" moniker from which Nazi derives is understood by any historian with a pulse as one of the most famous misonomers in history, like, e.g., "Holy Roman Empire" (which was none of these) or "German Democratic Republic" (the old East Germany). There is zero controversy about this point except maybe in the depths of Reddit somewhere. Not only were they not socialists, they weren't even national at the time. The Nazi party was and remains the archetype of right-wing extremism/fascism. You know that.

The KKK thing is one of the just plain siliiest canards you'll see in a conversation among mostly educated people, and I've seen you make it multiple times on this blog. Which party has sustained the spirit of the KKK (if not always the robes) over the last 50 years since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" flipped those southern Dems to the GOP? Which side has spent that time fighting for civil rights? Seriously, dude. That's a clown line, bro.

I'll leave the unbelievably selective nuggets in the rest of the post for posterity, because, again, trench. How sad. Or should I say... "Sad!"

only disappointed stalin wasn't more of a racist. read his book if you doubt. only twisting history in our day has lead you to disagree with this.

and do you care to address the hundreds of millions killed by the leftist, or the lefties who shoot our presidents? didn't think so. see the post just above this one. please tell me where any of those facts i cited are wrong. otherwise, you might want to rethink a few things.

this is pretty sad from a guy that seems reasonable sometimes. Your ignorance here is...astonishing, really. I'm not sure why I'm even getting into this with a guy so entrenched in ignorance (somehow the history books you've read are better/different than the ones everyone else has read and only you have the ultimate authority here?).

Hitler claimed to be a "National Socialist" which was merely the name of the party used to attract the working class. His politics and views were not at all socialist - he actually hated socialism (and capitalism and liberalism). His goal was to create a community of Aryans with German heritage, which he claimed would be one 'class', but that obviously has nothing to do with socialist ideas of a single class. There was no redistribution of wealth or land under Hitler.

As to your other points, there are really bad people on the extreme "right" and "left". It doesn't appear that you know what those ideologies are at their core, but below is the difference. If you think otherwise, that's probably the source of your confusion:

Have atrocities been committed by the supposed extreme "left"? Absolutely. Mao was certainly an extreme leftist and killed the landowning/ruling classes. Fidel, Che and others fall in this category. But the minute they were willing to kill certain classes they stopped being "leftist" because killing a certain class isn't treating them equally.

Have atrocities been committed by the "right"? Definitely. What about slavery? Slavery is by definition right-wing. If a group of people believe they're better than another such that their freedoms should allow them to enslave another group of people and create brutally tiered social classes, they're righties. Imperialists? Colonialists? Mostly righties believing their superiority grants them the right to take whatever they want, kill whomever they want.

Of course, there is no correct ideology here. A balance is probably best. Right wingers are correct that hierarchies will form naturally, but left wingers (especially Christians, of which I believe you are one) are correct that our morals as humans should compel us to not treat anyone as less of a human or less valuable than anyone else. Some people might be better at things than others and people are all different, but we're all equal in God's eyes, right?

Unfortunately, there are bad people that do bad things in the name of a lot of ideas and people do them for "left", "right", "up" and "down" reasons. But whichever direction they're pointing, they mostly they do them for power/tribalism (because our caveman lizard brains needed to be that way to survive before we were civilized.)

because your only argument for anything is that you're correct, and everything anyone else says is not real. Those are the definitions, bud. Those are the foundational worldviews of rightist or leftist politics, in the world in which we all live.

Everyone on here is probably curious as to your definitions of right and left because you're clearly living in a rightist propaganda bubble (hey, I can play that game too, great arguments, man!).

The only logical conclusion by your comments is that left is simply "all that which is bad and which I do not like."

Uh, actually Hitler hated Stalin passionately because he viewed his Slavic heritage as repugnant. He viewed Stalin as a political and genetic inferior and really had no interest in dealing with him whatsoever.

The nice thing about Vietnam is that you can't really lay it at the feet of one party. Democrats and Republicans both have plenty of blame. But if you want to apply the moniker "war-monger" to Kennedy and Johnson and somehow think that the term does not also apply to Nixon you are either misinformed or disingenuous.

Plus, why limit it to those two administrations and not, say, Eisnehower? It seems somewhat convenient to blame the two Democratic administrations while seemingly letting the Republicans off the hook. It seems like you are less interested in a fair assessment of responsibility and more interested in scoring partisan points.

Eisenhower sent economic aid and military advisors to South Vietnam. In fact, the very existence of South Vietnam was partly the responsibility of the Eisenhower administration. The United States pushed for the creation of a non-communist zone in Vietnam at the Geneva conference; once it existed the U.S. threw its support behind it as a bastion against communist expansion.

You make it sound like JFK came to office and just sort of decided, "Hmm, where would be a good place to get involved militarily? Oh, how about South Vietnam?" as if there were no preliminary steps.

Look, if you think Vietnam was a mistake and/or think America's tendency to use military force during the Cold War was misguided, don't for a second think that this was a "Democratic" or "Republican" position, or one limited to the left or the right. Both parties supported and executed the Cold War.

It's like your view of racist policies: Americans of all political stripes have been responsible for racist policies in the past. Sadly, it's a thread that runs through our entire history. To try to place the blame on one party--and especially think that it's been the same party for the past 170 years--is frankly ludicrous.

Look Xtra: you are a valued and respected member of this blog. You've contributed more to our discussions (quantity and quality) than I ever will. But your posts in this thread have been nakedly partisan.

There's no reason that Identifying with the contemporary US right should make anyone slow to denounce racism, and in these circumstances the tu quoque defense should be repugant to any decent American regardless of his/her politics.

i was not responding to your post and didn't read it, but i promise not to use any caveman voice if/when i see it. the facts asserted are not tu quoque, but facts. there are no comparable facts on the other side becauase the greatest brutalization of our species has been by the left, and its not even within 150 million dead people being a close comparison.

Sorry about "rant." But I do think your historical account mixes some superficial facts with a number of half-truths.

But I'll try one more time to come to some understanding. You're right if your point is that racism, political violence, or white supremacy have not been confined historically to one side of the political spectrum. I would say that the Nazis, the KKK, et al. can be accurately categorized as right-wing, but that point of taxonomy shouldn't matter very much to us today (unless your're a political scientist, maybe). Thus it find it very worrisome that some commentators today in the US seem to be reluctant to condemn violent racists just because they'd have to take a break from hitting their preferred punching bags on the other side, whatever they call them (the left, Dems, BLM, and so on).

Abortion. You're entitled to your opinion about abortion, but it's pretty extreme to equate the legal termination of pregnacy to the atrocities of Hitler and friends. You're also mighty ignorant if you think only left-wingers get abortions. C'mon.

KKK - yes, KKK grew from anti-reconstruction backlash mostly associated with racist southern Democrats. However, you know as well as I do that those southern Democrats were hardly "leftists", and Nixon's "southern strategy" turned the tables on party affiliation. Republican is now the preferred party of most white supremicists, including the KKK, and their philosophy is alt-right.

Charlottesville - The entire rally was called "Unite the Right" - don't try to pretend. The madman Fields who murdered an innocent woman was part of the rally, and espoused deeply far-right ideology.

"The 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville was ostensibly about protecting a statue of Robert E. Lee. It was about asserting the legitimacy of “white culture” and white supremacy, and defending the legacy of the Confederacy."

Assassinations - your assertion that all these crazies were/are "leftists" is simply false.

TR - John Schrank. If anything other than crazy, he supported the more conservative Republicans over TR's progressive "Bull Moose".

"According to documents found on Schrank after the attempted assassination, Schrank had written that he was advised by the ghost of William McKinley in a dream to avenge his death, pointing to a picture of Theodore Roosevelt. Different accounts claim that in the dream he instead saw McKinley rise from a coffin and point at Roosevelt, who was wearing a monk's robe."

"It is known that Schrank opposed a sitting President's ability to seek a third term in office."

"A fervent Christian, Sirhan explored several denominations as an adult. He identified as a Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist before joining the occult Rosicrucians."

He was a Palestinian opposed to US support for Israel. He was not a "Leftist".

Reagan - John Hinckley. He was just crazy, and obsessed with Jodie Foster. He apparently first considered assassinating Jimmy Carter.

"There is no evidence that John Hinckley, Jr. was a Democrat. He was clearly mentally ill, and fixated on the movie, Taxi Driver, where Robert DeNiro was a psychotic taxi driver, who contemplated political assassination, as well as rescued a young prostitute played by Jodi Foster. He became obsessed with Foster, even enrolling in Yale to stalk her. Initially, he began following President Carter (a Democrat) around, but never went through with an assassination attempt. His mental health deteriorated at the same time Reagan became president, and Hinckley finally went through with his plan. Before the attempt, he wrote a letter to Foster explaining how he was doing it for her."

Gabby Giffords (that's Giffords, not "Gifford") - Jared Lee Loughner. This guy is just a nut, and his ideology is all over the map. Here's the best description I could find:

"Loughner's paranoia is its own ideology: "Forget right or left," says Kathryn Olmsted in Foreign Policy. "Loughner's particular brand of government paranoia" fits in its own, "purely all-American" category. He reportedly thinks the U.S. faked the moon landing, the Federal Reserve is a Jewish plot, and 9/11 was a U.S. job. This "toxic jumble of left- and right-wing conspiracy theories" doesn't fit comfortably in either party"

If you're gonna bring in politics, at least make an effort to be honest and correct. I can't say I'm impressed by your "accurate history books".

sirhan was a palestinain extremist angry with kennedy for his support of israel: a decidedly right wing thing for bobby kennedy to do since all the israel protest/palestinain rights types are....lefties. and the fact that he was unstable and alledgely explored other faiths doesn't make him a repub.

nixon's southern strategy was to integrate the schools his first term in office - something JFK and LBJ had failed to do despite the mandates. nixon started affirmative action. he beat segregationists mcgovern and then wallace in '72, in a landslide. nixon enacted the philly plan in response to aggressive racial discrimination by construction unions, imposing quotas and timelines. so tell me again about the fallacy of the 'southern strategy'.

giffords shooter was a democrat who liked smoking dope. and i left pres garfield off the list. shot by charles guiteau and a commune living communist. lynette squeaky fromme shot at michigan grad gerald ford - she was a manson commune leftist. sara jane moore also tried to shoot ford about 2 weeks later....because she said he 'had declared war on the left'. there's more, lots more, but i'm going to bed.

do the research, not in wikipedia. the reality is contained in the congressional records and journals of the time, not necessarily the nice books or blogs written decades later and made to turn things upside down.

Just curious: you say Nixon started affirmative action, which you suggest is a good thing. Would you say that the right/the modern Republican Party generally supports affirmative action? My impression is that even if Nixon himself supported some forms of affirmative action, it would be preposterous to suggest that his position is reflective of the consensus in right-wing thought today.

I guess I'm a little confused: you point to positions advocated by southern Democrats 60 or more years ago to suggest that Democrats (and the left in general) are less racially progressive than Republicans. Isn't it more helpful to look at current positions embraced by the parties? You might still conclude that the right offers better policies for African Americans. But it is disingenuous to use Nixon's support of affirmative action--an approach roundly denounced on the right--as evidence in your favor.

ETA:
Tl,dr: you are using Nixon's support for affirmative action to suggest that he was more supportive of racial equality than his Democratic rivals. But today the left is far more likely to favor some form of affirmative action than the right.

I studied poli sci and mom was a librarian. I understand sourcing and attribution – neither of which you’ve done whatsoever. I’m not going to footnote a blog post.

Regarding Sirhan, your statement contradicts itself. RFK was a leftie who acted against his political viewpoint to support Israel, but Sirhan must have been a leftie in every way because of his opposition to support of Israel. Did I get that right?

Sirhan was born in then-Palestine, was a Jordanian citizen, and moved to the US when he was 12.

It’s not surprising that someone born in Palestine would be opposed to US support of Israel in the 6-day War. In itself, it offers absolutely no indication of his overall political viewpoint.

Many sources say he was born, raised, and devoutly Christian – he didn’t “allegedly explore” Christianity. You’re right, his religious affiliation doesn’t indicate his political leanings any more than does his opposition to the US support for Israel in the 6-Day War. If you have reliable sources that affirm his “leftie” beliefs, I'll accept it.

“doesn’t make him a repub.” – as Reagan said, “There you go again”. I responded to your argument about “lefties”, and mentioned nothing about political parties.

Re: Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”

Kevin Phillips was a Nixon strategist, widely acknowledged as the primary architect of his “southern strategy”. From a NYT profile:

“Kevin Phillips plots the emerging Republican majority, its common denominator is hostility to blacks and browns among slipping Democrats and abandonment of the Democratic party because of its identification with the colored minorities.”

“Phillips had one conspicuous campaign success—the urging of an Outer South Strategy aimed at capturing Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, as opposed to the Deep South Strategy that had carried Wallace territory for Goldwater in 1964, but at the cost of frightening away millions of potential voters elsewhere.”

Phillips' own words:

“Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

“My argument was this: Your outer Southerners who live in the Ozark and Appalachian mountain ranges and in the Piedmont upcountry—and now in urban‐suburban Florida and Texas—have always had different interests than the Negrophobe plantation owners of the Black Belt. This is a less extreme conservative group. It adheres with other Republican constituencies across the country and can be appealed to without fragmenting the coalition. When you are after political converts, start with the less extreme and wait for the extremists to come into line when their alternatives collapse.”

Ken Mehlman – GOP Chairman in 2005

"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Finally, Giffords' shooter. Yes, he did drugs. No, his political affiliation isn’t clear.

“Though the evidence seems to indicate Loughner lacks a fixed ideology (outside of anti-government sentiment) and may be mentally unstable, many have drawn conclusions about his political leanings. Some have cast him as a conservative and blamed Sarah Palin and Tea Party influences for his actions, while others have cast him as a "lunatic liberal."”

Nazi's et al you mention are right wing ideologies, regardless of what they were named. Most domestic terrorists are hard right-wingers (McVeigh, Roof et al.). However, assigning their terror to all people who are "conservative" is flat out wrong.

But mostly it's stupid because it is full of gross generalizations that do not apply to 99.99999% of people on either side of the left v right spectrum.

Your stance on abortion is absolutely ridiculous. It is a legal medical procedure and 100% the womans choice. But you act like it's "lefty driven racial genocide."

but finding a handful of wingnuts who now say they are 'right wing' isn't much proof. even the southern law poverty center called environmental extremists (always left) the greatest domestic terrorist threat and that the SLPC is no friend of the right. also, 'terror' includes riots and violence which again, is owned by the left world-wide.

as to abortion, when they are cutting up the babies' body parts and selling them i'm sorry, that isn't 'medical procedure' any more than lethal injection is. it is left driven genocide - it is an absolute requirement of the democrat party who now say they won't support any pro-life candidates. it was founded by margaret sanger (admired by hitler) who hated blacks and people with special needs. she was a leftie and her plan kills black children at a rate that is shocking: more black children are killed in some places than are allowed to be born. roll that around in your head for a minute. more killed than birthed. that is indeed genocide.

I have passionate feelings and deep-seated feelings about a lot of these issues. They're well thought-out and quite interesting to me. And I'm even capable of arguing in a civil discourse about them at the right time and place, provided I'm not met with bumper-sticker arguments from whoever I'm chatting with.

Another passionate feeling I have is that this is not the forum to try to sway folks on the abortion topic or most of these other politically-charged topics.

(I will say that calling Nazis "left-wing" is a bit out there - love you, XM, but that's just not tenable.)

There is really only one thing that I've drawn from all of your posts.

We are fucked.

I've been coming to the realization that we are far more divided as a country and "culture" than I used to think. It will get far worse before it gets better. I believe I will be on the "right" side (not your context of right) of history. I'm sure you believe the same. One of us is very, very wrong.

I won't even try to debunk any of the things you have posted here today, because "facts" can be twisted and manipulated to say what any given person wants them to say, if you have the wit. You clearly have that, at the least.

Vice news had a reporter embedded with the alt-right group. Letting them speak allows their nonsense to be heard and rejected. There's no normalizing their ideas. You don't have to filter their message through the left or right media. Let them convict themselves through their own words and actions.

The best thing we can do is turn our backs on them. They WANT to stir things up, to create a media splash. How much media will really cover them if there isn't violence and hateful shouting over the top of a police barricade? It is absurd to think that showing up to a hate speech event and shouting slogans would make them have less hate in their hearts.

The point of a "March for ____" is to generate attention. Don't give them what they want.

absolutely teach your kids acceptance, absolutely talk about and recognize real issues as much as possible. There are enough (too many) cases of actual, real-life racism and bigotry about which you can be very loud. Be aware of and denounce these rallys and anyone who believes in this flawed ideology.

But there is nothing productive about being there shouting at these guys in person. Someone else mentioned it above. It will only fuel them. It will only keep them in the news. It will only give them the recruiting footage they want.

That's what we've been doing. All it does is keep these people and their way of thinking in the dark corners of society. Over time, they bring others to their dark corners until one day somebody comes along that validates their way of thinking and they feel like they can emerge. I don't want them in the dark corner where they are out of sight just waiting for their time. I want their way of thinking eradicated. I want their neighbors, their family, and others in the community to know that this is wrong and that as Americans we won't tolerate their bullshit. I want it to be visible that they are moral outcasts from society. It won't change their beliefs but maybe it will discourage somebody else who starts to think it's okay to think like them.

It's time to stop ignoring them and time to stand against them.

Edit: in case there is any confusion, I certainly don't mean using violence. My point is that silence and turning our backs on them won't work.

I'm guessing you're joking, but on the off chance you're not, I'd re-consider. I wouldn't want to risk being the next 6pm news story about getting run over by someone's car. Not at all saying you shouldn't go out and voice your opinion, but for the love of god stay back and keep your hands to yourself.

It's like trying to pick a fight at a bar. You never know who's had one too many drinks or who decided they were bringing a knife with them in case anyone got in their face.

So pathetic that people think the best way to stop these "nazis" is to shout at them from across a street. This is a much bigger problem than that. No one seems to want to use reason. There are of course some white men who are despicable people and can never be reached, but there are some people who feel marginalized with the way media and culture portrays them. It is possible to reach those people with reason and not shouting. This type of progress does not happen at a protest. I honestly believe counter protests only help fuel the fire and create more harm.

The vast majority of those many white men that feel marginalized with the way media and society present them are not members of fascist organizations.

The ones that are likely cannot be reasoned with.

And you seem to imply that white men, when feeling marginalized, either tend to fascism or are in some way less culpable for turning to fascism. I went through a very tough period, felt very marginalized, and never thought about running people over with my car.

the best way to marginalize these people is exposing them on social media for who they are. Extracting social costs did as much to keep this sort of thing down for decades as any physical confrontation or even legislation.

As a card-carrying member of the ACLU, defending the right of Nazis to march is in my DNA. The right to oppose and disgrace them is, too.

I've actually seen those lunatics at a funeral I attended. It's hard to imagine such people exist, but there they were in the flesh.

The 2012 restrictions kept them 300 ft. (which isn't THAT far, really) from any family members and I believe there were time restrictions about how long before/after the services they could show up. I don't recall a1st Am. challenge in the courts on that particular law but it's likely treated the same way as abortion protest restrictions and those imposed on political protests at the party national conventions ("safe zones") where courts tend to defer to public safety concerns.

But to answer the question... I do support their right to protest short of deliberately inciting violence. Not because of a "slippery slope" argument, which is a great way to score a D in a constitutional law class. Rather, because if the state can show a balance of harms between reasonable restrictions on free speech (which happens all the time) in exchange for public safety, that's something we as a society can live with, even if the preference of 99.9% of us is that these people would crawl into the world's deepest hole and stay there.

They stand at the street corner in front of my church cursing everyone out and holding up their dirty little signs. I feel like going over and breaking their signs and shoving it up their ass. But the best thing to do is to ignore them. They spread their hate by trying to confront you plus they have a bunch of lawyers in their racist little klan that go around suing people or municipalities that attack them or will not let them protests. They made some $ in the last 20 years suing cities that refused to let them protest. Ignoring them seems to be working in the last 5 years. Their little group is dwindling and they are not traveling around the country like they use to 10 years ago. The one mile restriction may have worked making them invisible to most and reducing the attention they seek at fallen veteran's funerals.

I may be reacting to all the outrage I read when the tweet happened. I guess what I'm saying that may be diferent from you today is basically so what? I find the tweet in questionable taste, but at the same time I'm totally fine with it and have no issue whatsoever with Brian sending it.

It's so facinating to see how intolerant we are to other people's opinions and their right to express them. In fact, we socially bully them when we think they are morally unjust (which is quite ironic, with all the anti-bullying messaging that's going on in middle schools and high schools).

The joke reads to me as "look at these other jabronis who also tried to claim victory in abject failure." I don't see this as minimizing the awfulness of neo-Nazism, but as painting it in an (appropriately) absurd and pathetic light. Reasonable interpretations might vary, but I really don't get the moral outrage.

Yes, the nazis were/are terrible. Now let's look at the actual context of the tweet. You may find it a poor attempt at humor, and that's fine, but I think you're laying it on kinda thick here. Is anyone calling in sick today because they're so devastated by Brian's tweet?

The Dictator is a good example, though, of going ahead with an edgy and pointed joke/gag/satire even though a certain percentage of dunderheads won't get the joke and will be offended.

A lot of people think that Lolita is a book celebrating pedophilia. Those people have, in my experience, two things in common. First, they only read the first half of the novel. Second, they are idiots.

As a general matter, I'm not a fan of dumbing down humor/satire/comedy for the lowest common denominator. Give credit to your expected audience, and - if you're being edgy - understand that the humor will offend some who are predisposed to being offended (or simply not that bright).

Tough to pull off Dictator-level satire with a tweet. Brian's error (as I see it) has something to do with the limitations of the medium. And the subject matter only raises the degree of difficulty. Maybe there was a good idea behind the original tweet, but if so the execution was poor, in my view.

...which makes it difficult to joke about. I adopted two African American boys and my family stands out in public. At Lowe's a man decided to grab my 4 yr old by the arm and yell at him and my wife, saying he wanted to buy some slaves and wanted to know what aisle they were in. In a Publix parking lot, a man spit tobacco on me, my son, and our cart of groceries. We've heard obscenities countless times. I've had to answer questions no 4 year old should have to ask. I think about these things when my family goes anywhere and does anything. I search the faces of the people around us, always trying to stay ahead of the situation and protect my kids. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans smile or ignore us as they would any other family. But it only takes one asshole to ruin your nearby grocery store for your kids and send you shopping somewhere else. You change your lifestyle when this is your reality. It is neither high horse or PC to find the blending of this topic and sports offensive. If you think it's funny, that's fine. But please understand why others cannot.

I wasn't there when it happened. I suspect he was willing to act out publicly since it was only my wife and our 4 year old. One of the changes we've made as a family is that we limit the times she runs errands with the kids by herself. We also bought guns. When my son and I were spit on at Publix there were about 5 or 6 guys in a work crew standing by their trucks in the parking lot. I felt enraged and would have loved to break that guy's face but I was powerless in that situation. They saw my reaction and laughed.

I want to emphasize that in 5 years of raising our boys we've had only a handful of negative experiences and many thousands of normal and even great experiences. We receive more smiles than rude comments by many magnitudes. As a Dad of a trans-racial family I am proud of what our country is today while also harboring greater hopes for what it still could be. Events like Charlottesville don't change my idea of the United States. We've always known those ideas were out there. But from our oldest's birthday in 2012 until the summer of 2016 we never had a single incident. Since then it's been a different matter.

It's awful you and your family have to put up with that kind of garbage.

Please, I urge you to think twice before bring firearms into the mix - while the moments you've described are abhorrent, it doesn't sound like your family has been in mortal or even physical danger. Not sure how guns would change anything other than maybe escalation.

Not sure which of your statements is more accurate - "obscenities countless times" or "only a handful of negative experiences". If it's the former and your family is constantly being harrassed, I'd seriously consider choosing a more welcoming community.

I know lots of racially/ethnically mixed families here in SF (pretty much any combination one could imagine). A bunch of us had a conversation about this very topic, and outside of some inappropriate (but not ill-meaning) comments/questions, none mentioned any really bad experiences.

Bad apples everywhere (including here), but fergodsakes, you and your fam should be able to live your lives in peace. Best for you and yours!

As fun as it is to get into a pissing contest about whose sense of humor is superior, or raunchier, or manlier, or more irreverent (or whatever it is you're into), a woman died in a terrorist attack this weekend. It wouldn't be funny or smart if he had made the same comparison to ISIS. It's not funny when he makes the comparison to homocidal Nazis. This tweet is bizarre peacocking. Not only that, it's a shitty look for a fan base which loves to make itself out to be "better than." And it's also stupid for the boardmaster to do because it invited this discussion which is fraught with current political tensions.

I think the tweet is fine. It's certainly more entertaining than the weak ass 3-9 jokes. The dignity headline was absurd and should have offended staee fans. besides, white supremacy is nothing to lose your sense of humor over... we'll keep beating them down just like little brother.

I think it was just a bad joke that got away from him. I think he saw the "moral victory" thing and noted how ridiculous such a claim is and it just reminded him of the MSU thing. It just isn't a fit though. I think people can often make funny jokes about the most serious of topics with tact. This just wasn't one of those times.

the comment can be taken different ways depending on whether you assume he meant all people or some people. I'm never too sure with the choo-choo guy, but I assumed some and there's nothing wrong with saying that.

I watched the 2016 movie about the case. Being in an interracial marriage, I was hopeful for the movie. It was a big let down for me. I didn't like how they started the movie - she's pregnant, gotta get married. I would have liked to find out more about what initially brought them together. Maybe the guy was quiet and introspective in real life, but that didn't make for an interesting movie. I would have liked to see more about the Supreme Court decision, what they thought about, why they ruled the way they did, etc.

I don't have a problem with the joke, other than it's not as sharply honed as it could be. In other words, I had to read the original a couple of times to get the joke. Brian's a master of a concise quip, and this one read a bit clumsy to me.

What I I don't read into it is Brian calling MSU fans Nazis. I read it as him saying that both the MSU fans who were (mind-bogglingly) proud to lose by nine and the Nazis who somehow think they were successful this w/e are similarly deluded.

Here's what's interesting about this...Whether you're a right-winger grappling with what happened this weekend (and trying to deflect it off mainstream conservatism and Trump), or a left-winger outraged about what happened this weekend (and maybe trying to conflate all conservatives and conservatism with the extreme right), you probably find this Tweet in poor taste. In other words, I am guessing very, very few people will find this funny, and instead find it in poor taste.

Last fall, EVERYONE - Michigan and Sparty alike - agreed that the MSU headline was stupid and self-defeating and worthy of mockery. Every sports fan knows that asking for credit for your moral victories is asking for still more mockery.

So when these Nazi douchebags try to claim victory, we all rightly point and laugh and say "if you're asking for credit for a moral victory, we point and laugh at you."

Agreed, but that's not the problem. The problem is that it looks Brian is comparing a sensitive national tragedy to a football rivalry. And while that was clearly not his intention, the reaction was predictable. In our current climate of self-righteous indignation, where everyone is looking to prove to everyone else that they care the most about whatever issue is at hand, a comparison like this is always going to draw fire.

It's not the end of the world, it's just in poor taste. When I was in college we would have called it a party foul.

I don't really see this as a joke--more like commentary. I think Brian is commenting on the media coverage--saying that to see the events of the weekend as some sort of partial "victory" for neo-Nazis is not good journalism. In both instances, writers seem to be going for a "hot take" that bears little resemblance to reality.

The problem isn't, as I think Brian is suggesting in the twitter conversation, that Nazis are so bad, we shouldn't compare them to Spartans. It's that one of those Nazis just killed someone, and so while MSU going 3-9 is funny, the Nazis are not something we should laugh about right now...or at least if you're going to say something funny about them, it had better be good and crystal clear what you are saying.

We should take the threat they pose seriously, and deal with the risks and damage they cause with the greatest means available under the law. They are a threat to national security and our basic moral fiber.

But they WANT to be taken super-seriously. They want to be seen as a legitimate threat to the current social order. We shouldn't grant them that. They are inherently ridiculous; they are LARPers who think their wooden shields and tiki torches make them some sort of insurgent army. I have no problem pointing and laughing at these silly, small men.

I see that. But there's something to be said about timing and how funny the joke is. "Ha. Ha. They make the same pathetic excuses as Spartans." is a) not that funny, and b) not completely clear that we aren't making fun of the Spartans by comparing them to Nazis when we often make fun of Spartans. There's probably a way to make this comparison of pathetic reactions on the blog with some context, but just a side-by-side pair of images on twitter doesn't do it.

And I;m not even talking necessarily about this specific instance. I've just heard people say in the last few days that this isn't a time to joke about these guys, and I think that when talking about jokers, joking is among the most reasonable responses.

it wasn't totally cool, but NOBODY claimed it was. Nobody came out and said "this war between democrats and rebublicans has been going on for a long time, and both sides bear responsibility."

Here, the violent action that was taken was a direct extension of the platform of the original protests. Lumping the counter-protesters in with the original protest is to criticize people for vocally rejecting an objectively wrong and dangerous belief structure. This "screw violence on both sides" that I keep hearing is a total cop out.

if you read the internet, it most clearly isn't. The number of people twisting themselves into pretzels going out of their way to apologize for Nazis would be somewhat amusing if it wasn't so damn depressing.

The tweet was in poor taste. The comparison is accurate, and might have even been funny if constructed differently (I think if he had just tweeted, "Nazis claiming moral victory is like MSU claiming dignified defeat" there would be no controversy or certainly much less controversy; juxtaposing images makes it feel like Brian is equivocating).

That said, whether you like it or not, using a highly sensitive issue to poke fun at a rival football team when the country is still grappling with said issue is going to make some people justifiably upset. It's a matter of decorum.

This doesn't make Brian a bad person or invalidate everything he has ever done, and it certainly does not justify many of the twitter responses (how can people not realize they are doing exactly what they are criticizing?). Self-righteous indignation is all the rage right now, and the overreaction to the tweet is, unfortunately, typical. But that doesn't mean the tweet was in good taste.

That's a fair criticism. A whole lot of groups are susceptible to groupthink.

But in my opinion, the term "social justice warrior" is usually used in situations where a person is advocating for a cause, and another person disagrees with that cause but expressing that disagreement is uncomfortable, so instead they just attack the person. That's why I'm not a fan of the term - it's an ad-hominem attack rather than an attempt to actually discuss the substantive issue.

I don't really care what people think or say. Nor do I feel I should tell someone how they can or can't display how they feel. Especially when it'll have zero impact on my life. Too many people get butt hurt over internet comments. If you don't like something, go the fuck home. You don't have to answer for someone else if they do cross a line, so what does it matter? Tomorrow will come, and if it doesn't then you really don't have shit to worry about.

You must've read my comment as something else, but I was referring to social media comments saying to apologize and take it down not the protests themselves. But it is extremely comfortable to not care what people put on social media. I'm not interested in what the general population thinks or says that's why I'm not on any social media. More people need to get off Facebook and their high horse.

enough people were either offended or just thought it was a bad tweet, that it should be deleted. Right now, the negative backlash just wouldn't be worth it. At least to me. But it's Brian's account. He can do what he wants.

I'd like to see Brian treat the mgoblog twitter account like a business account, not his personal account. If I were ever to consider being a named sponsor on this site, I'd expect that anything under the mgoblog name as an online presence would be consistently professional and this tweet in particular fails that test by a long shot, imo.

Was a little edgy, but unless it starts developing into a pattern, I'll give Brian the benefit of the doubt and just move on with my life.

Like the rest of us should. This is why I don't have a Twitter account and why I hardly ever even look at anyone's accounts to begin with. There is such an outright demand that we all be 100% politically correct all the time, and the minute someone does or says one thing that's even slightly off color, all the SJWs come out of the woodworks and shout on the rooftops about how that person is a misogynist, a racist, a sexist, or some combination of the three. They can't believe someone would say something so completely offensive. Sometimes the ridicule is justified, but also sometimes people overreact and complain about a situation just because they can.

I'm sure this post will be met with a few negs, but we're already treading into thread lock territory anyway. This is just how I feel. Sometimes I understand the outrage, but sometimes everyone just needs to grow up. On both sides of the fence.

I sort of see what Brian was trying to do, but it's also somewhat foggy; its not clear who is being made fun of here, what exactly is being said, and how exactly the two contexts cohere. And when you are making a joke in circumstances such as these, it has to be tight, clean, and crisp. This attempt to make a joke, or whatever the goal was, fails.

being displayed here. The amount of people saying "I'm not offended but maybe someone else was" is exactly why this tweet isn't a big deal. Hey everybody, I'd you didn't find it offensive...perhaps it truly wasn't. FFS.

didn't think it was particularly offensive, I just didn't think it was funny. There are a lot of ways to be not funny without referencing a terrorist attack that literally took place 4 days ago. I think that is kind of the point.

I don't think Brian was making fun of the terrorist attack. He was making fun of the racist terrorists claiming "victory" when they were exposed as a bunch of violent losers. Likewise, I don't think he was drawing equivalence between terrorists and MSU, just in the stupid reaction to events.

Ugh we get it. Nazis are evil. Fuck cancer. Rape is bad. Look at me I'm a good person becasue I'm against bad things and act outraged when others dont denounce the bad things.

I'd like to think that Brian has the social awareness to not post a "joke" that conflates two things that really don't need to be compared. The seriosuness of the two events contrast so much. Maybe that's the joke? I think it was more of a troll job than a joke. In that case, he's doing great!

Great point. It's not enough to be a decent person and keep it to yourself. You have to make sure everyone knows how much you love puppies and a healthy environment and diversity, you have to shout it to the rooftops with rage, and anyone who doesn't "like" it is immediately under suspicion of being a racist nazi goober. All that being said and as much as I enjoy the scribbles of our beloved leader Brian, I do think it was a dumb tweet, of which I am already over it.

Setting aside whether you think it is offensive, the "analogy" is a swing and a miss.

In the case of MSU, MSU lost a football game but claimed a moral victory. There are no moral victories, a loss is a loss, hence the joke.

In the case of the white supremacists, by any measure they were quite successful on Saturday. I believe it was the largest, single gathering of white supremacists in decades and it is a movement that disturbingly appears to be on the rise and isn't going away. They certainly didn't lose on Saturday.

the minute they opened their mouths and started speaking. They are continuing to lose this week as they are identified, lose their jobs, and get shunned by their now former co-workers, their rational family members and associates. They may have some friends that share their whack ideas, but so what?

This group is different from the Westboro Baptist Church, which is basically a few people. I'm guessing this collection of white supremacists and their adherents/followers/sympathizers (who weren't at the rally) outnumber the margin Trump won Michigan, PA and Wisconsin combined. They are an ascendant group and considering Trump's unwillingness to disavow them (since they helped him win the election), aren't going anywhere.

I too think they are losers but to dismiss them as a flash in the pan is unwise.

Obviously there are many interpretations of that tragedy, but there are definitely a number of reasonably intelligent people who think that the "alt-right" significantly hurt their cause. The reasoning is that a lot of people had viewed the alt-right as younger, more internet-savvy, more anti-establishment conservatives. Now they've been exposed as violent racist Nazis.

Alt-Right != Nazis. These were legitamate, Hitler loving, arm extending Nazis. Making false equivelancies does nothing to help anyone. Now both groups are shitty, but one is *far* worse than the other.